House of Sand and Fog

by Andre Dubus III

  Mr. Burdon looks at Nadi beside me. I cannot read his face, for it is full of light and shadow from the candle flames. Nadi lowers her head. I regard my son. His elbows rest upon his legs, his chin upon the knuckles of his hands. He appears as if is watching a game of chess or backgammon between two professional players. I feel some irritation at this, but ebnadereh, it makes no difference.

  I drink more tea and I wait for Mr. Burdon to say something or perhaps do something, for surely, the next move is his.

  THE ROOM FELT TOO SMALL, AND LESTER NEEDED TO MOVE, THOUGH he had no idea where he could move to—the couch? One of the stools? What he should really do was carry Kathy to his car and drive her home to rest and wake up beside him. But where was home? The fish camp? A motel room over in San Bruno? And she shouldn’t be disturbed anyway. Disturbed. The word seemed to linger in his head like a shred of silk on barbed wire.

  And she had no home because of this colonel, who kept glancing over at his son, then his wife beside him, then he would look at Lester, but only very briefly. He would drink his tea and look back down at the burning candles. Sometimes the colonel’s eyes shifted to the gun protruding from Lester’s waistband, and Lester didn’t like him looking at it; it was as if he was keeping an eye on the only true thing he had to fear, and Lester wanted to feel the pistol back in his hand, to let the colonel know one went with the other. But did it? Lester wasn’t so sure. Part of him wanted to apologize profusely for kicking his way into this house—breaking and entering, in fact—and he wanted to take his service pistol, walk out the front door, and just come by in the morning for Kathy. She would probably be clear enough to drive her car then, and she could follow him to wherever it was they were going. But this part of him was a small voice up against one larger: he couldn’t imagine leaving Kathy here for the night without him, not when he felt so shut out from Kathy herself, from the series of decisions she’d apparently made today that didn’t seem to take him into account at all. From taking his gun to taking the pills in the bathroom, what could have happened since this morning to put her over the line like that? And all he could think of was her and alcohol. Lester still felt the dulled edge of his own hangover from last night and he couldn’t imagine having another drink today. But she had gotten drunk, and he was beginning to think that had to be the missing piece of things. He’d seen it time after time in his work, people doing things deep under the influence they wouldn’t have even given a thought to sober, all the traffic fatalities, the petty thievery and arson. And she hadn’t made things any easier for him. Did she give him any thought at all when she took his gun from the trunk? Did she care how entangled he’d become in this thing with her? And once he and she left this place, what was to keep this slimy officer from dialing the department, or even the Corona police? The Iranian had new charges on him now: B&E, and Brandishing a Weapon. And there were still the departmental code violations, any of which the colonel could pursue.

  Lester was thirsty and he wanted to drink from the tea the colonel’s wife had served him, but to do so at this moment would feel like a conciliatory move, as if he were a dog exposing his throat to one stronger. He glanced again at the framed photograph on the wall of Behrani addressing the Shah of Iran, a man who years ago Carol had told Lester all about, a man who had hundreds, maybe thousands, gunned down in one afternoon for daring an unarmed protest against him and his entourage. And Behrani was smiling at some kind of party with him, and now the colonel’s eyes were again on the gun probably just visible in Lester’s waistband behind him.

  Lester stared at him. Behrani looked back down at his tea and slowly, almost casually, he stirred it with only his thumb and forefinger. It was such a self-assured gesture, a man adapting easily to his new circumstances, and it left Lester feeling outmatched in some sort of game he hadn’t known he was playing. He began to feel afraid, and he wanted to kick the colonel in the teeth, this friend of dictators, this man who had refused to sell Kathy back her house.

  Lester pulled the pistol from his waistband and set it loudly on the counter. “Go do something. All of you.”

  The boy stood first, then the colonel and his wife. She avoided looking in Lester’s direction and she squatted and blew out the candles. Then she picked up from the couch the lamp the boy had knocked over and she placed it back on the end table, turned it on, and began clearing the remaining plates and glasses from the rug. The colonel stood there while his wife worked around him. The boy looked from his father to Lester’s gun to Lester’s face.

  “Go to your room, joon-am,” the colonel said, and the boy began to move down the hall.

  “Wait.” Lester turned to him and asked him his name.

  “Esmail.”

  “Do you have a phone in there, Esmail?”

  “No.”

  Lester glanced at the colonel, who was standing straight now, his chin up, his eyes on his child. In the kitchen Mrs. Behrani picked up a dirty plate and held it. Lester took a breath, this logical, inevitable next step gathering in his chest, and he ordered all three of them back into the hallway and the boy’s room.

  There was no phone, just a bedside lamp near a framed photograph. Tacked to the wall was the color poster of a skateboarder in midair, no sign of the ground anywhere, his arms spread wide, both knees bent. On a desk at the foot of the bed was a computer terminal, keyboard, and a modem, its Internet and E-mail cable plugged into the phone jack under the desk. Lester nodded his head toward the boy and told him to unplug the modem on both ends and give it to him. It took him only a few seconds and when the boy handed it over he glanced down at the pistol Lester was careful not to point at him.

  “Esmail, I want you to stay in this room until I say otherwise, all right? If you have to go to the bathroom, I want you to ask me first.”

  The boy looked over at his father and mother, Mrs. Behrani holding first the fingers of one hand, then the fingers of the other, and Lester heard himself order them back to the front of the house. He put the computer modem and its cables on the lamp table beside the couch, and Mrs. Behrani seemed to distract herself with work, with clearing the dining rug and rolling it up, her husband stepping to the side to allow her room, and Lester could hear the sounds of a video game coming from down the hall, a series of manic, off-key computerized musical notes followed by the scattered static of a simulated explosion. The colonel turned to Lester, his arms still folded in front of his chest. In the light from the kitchen he looked old and thin, an exiled patriarch.

  “We have done nothing to you. What do you intend here?”

  Lester had no idea. None. He sat down on the couch. It was soft and deep, covered with an expensive fabric. Everything in this house seemed expensive: the new brass bed Kathy slept on; the wine-red Persian carpets; the mosaic-framed picture of Persian horsemen on the wall; the heavy silver samovar on the kitchen counter; the gold lamp and shade the boy had nearly broken when Lester kicked in the door; even the late-model Buick out in the driveway. Again, Lester felt he was up against something larger than himself. His mouth was dry and he rested his weapon flat on the arm of the couch, running his index finger over the tiny ridges of the safety tab, his eyes on the carpet. “Who did you talk to in Redwood City, Colonel?”

  “A lieutenant.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Alvarez. His name is Lieutenant Alvarez.”

  Lester flushed on hearing what he had already assumed, and he tried to swallow but couldn’t. The sofa felt too soft, as if he were sinking more deeply into it.

  “Certainly you would have done the same, Mr. Burdon.”

  The colonel’s wife was running water in the sink so Lester wasn’t sure if he’d heard a challenge in this man’s voice or had only inferred it because he’d just used Lester’s name, but something shifted forward inside him—it wasn’t Kathy; she wasn’t to blame for any of this; she hadn’t done anything that couldn’t be traced to this prick, this man who was looking down at his hand resting on his leg, at a gold ring there with
a red stone in the center. A ruby? Lester could feel the muscles tightening around his eyes and mouth. He sat up. “When do you plan to give this house back, Colonel?”

  Mrs. Behrani was still at the sink drying plates with a white cloth, her face turned slightly toward the counter where her husband sat, though he remained silent, sitting with his back straight, as if he was above having to respond to Lester’s question at all.

  Lester took a breath. “Do you really need this tiny place?”

  “This is none of your business, sir.”

  Lester pushed himself from the couch and was at the counter before he could even get a full grip on his pistol. He told himself to keep the weapon at his side, no need to dig a deeper hole, but the colonel’s face was so still, so impassive, the whites of his eyes yellowed with age and a world-weariness that seemed to reduce Lester instantly to no real threat at all, only a mere nuisance, like Kathy, like the dispute over this house; Lester had no choice but to push the square barrel up under the colonel’s chin. His heart fluttered behind his ribs, and his organs seemed to float inside him. He pulled the hammer all the way back, but kept the final safety on, and he could smell radish on the colonel’s breath. The Iranian’s lips began to purse like he was getting ready to speak, but Lester pushed the pistol harder into the underside of his chin. “That woman sleeping back there is my business. Everything about her is my business. Do you understand me? Now I want you to start thinking how we’re going to solve all this.”

  The colonel’s wife was crying softly, and in his peripheral vision Lester could see her standing there in the kitchen holding the white dishcloth in both her hands as if she were praying with it. “Please, please, we have nothing. Nothing. My husband only is good. Our son must to go university. That is all. Please, we are good people.” She kept crying, quietly, taking in long shuddering breaths of air. The colonel’s eyes were wet, though Lester didn’t know if this was from fear or the fact he wasn’t blinking. Lester thumbed the hammer back to quarter-lock, edged the pistol from under the colonel’s jaw, and sat down on the stool next to him, facing him. He rested his gun on the countertop and he seemed to be waiting for the colonel’s wife to continue, but she only sniffled and pressed her finger discreetly to her nose. The notes of the boy’s computer video game sped into a high-pitched victory tune that soon faded into electronic space, and Lester’s back and head felt suddenly too exposed to possibility and he stood and moved to the end of the counter, but the hallway was empty and the iron crowbar was still leaning against the door casing where the colonel had left it. Lester’s arms and legs were heavy and there was a slight tremor in the forearm of his gun hand. He wanted to see Kathy, to check on her, but now he couldn’t leave these people alone to do it.

  “Tell to him, Massoud,” the wife said. “To him explain.”

  But the colonel didn’t seem to be listening. He was looking straight at Lester, the cheeks of his face empty of color, his eyes narrowed slightly, his lips a straight line, and Lester knew he’d just crossed a border not only in himself, but in the colonel as well. Lester waved his pistol in their general direction, then stood to the side of the hallway’s entrance, told them to go first. “We’re going to see how the owner of this house is doing.” But the words came out sounding hollow to him, like there was a lie in what he’d just said, and as the colonel and his wife moved past him into the hallway, the wife still sniffling, Lester followed with his pistol hanging heavily at his side and he had a sudden wish for the colonel to do something, to grab the crowbar and try to swing it at him, to run, anything, anything that might make this gun in his hand feel less like the burdensome overreaction it had become.

  MOMENTS HAVE PASSED SINCE LESTER V. BURDON PRESSED TO MY flesh his loaded weapon, yet still I am feeling it against my skin and it is no effort to imagine the large-caliber bullet tearing through my head like a missile, and I want only to kill this man who has broken into our home to do this after we saved his gendeh’s pitiful life.

  But I can of course do nothing with this desire, and my body has become quite stiff, the muscles of my neck, back, and legs as tight as if bound with rusted chain. The man orders us to Nadereh’s bedroom. I move slowly. Nadi is to my back, Burdon to hers. I enter the room first. The gendeh sleeps peacefully, her thick hair a nest around her small face. Burdon orders us to the far side of the bed and with his free hand he puts his fingers to the artery beneath the woman’s jaw. After a moment, he places his palm over her forehead. And he no longer appears confused. He touches her cheek, then tells to us we will visit our son, and he follows us. Again, I enter first. Esmail sits upon the bed in which Kathy Nicolo slept. The video game’s remote control panel is backwards upon his lap, and the window behind him is open widely, the screen as well, the outdoors light shining upon the mist over the grasses, and Esmail’s eyes are quite large and I feel in my hands the pounds of my heart; in Farsi I whisper to him to close it immediately: “Holah, holah.” He jumps to the task, the remote control box falling to the floor. I cough quite loudly but we are too late; Lester V. Burdon pushes past Nadi and me and with one hand upon my son’s shoulder he pulls him from the window. Esmail nearly falls backwards from the bed but Burdon stops him with the side of his body, the weapon in his hand at his leg. It is within one step of me. I can reach and grasp it, twist it from him, but I do nothing for I imagine the gun firing, my son or wife hurt or worse.

  Burdon pulls Esmail from the bed, forcing him to stand beside us. My arm extends instantly around my son’s shoulders. And I hold Nadi’s small, warm arm. She is trembling, or perhaps it is I who tremble. I am surprised to feel my body standing at full attention.

  “What am I going to do with you people?” He asks this of all of us but he is regarding only our child. “What were you going to do, Ishmael?”

  “Esmail,” my son tells to him. I squeeze his shoulder and I am hoping he does not misunderstand this as encouragement to continue with any belligerence.

  Lester V. Burdon inhales a deep breath, exhaling it without turning his head. “Did you leave this house, Esmail?”

  Against my arm upon his back I feel the beating of my son’s heart. He shakes his head no, he did not. The video game emits the electronic music of alien aircraft flying off to battle in space, its refrain repeating itself every few seconds. Burdon regards the entire room, then he looks once more at my son. “Were you planning to use a neighbor’s phone, Esmail?”

  Esmail does not answer. Our captor rests his unarmed hand against his hip. In his other hand the weapon hangs straight at his side, his shoulders seeming to droop as if under a great weight. Burdon’s face is lowered, but his eyes are leveled at our son.

  “I am losing my patience, Esmail.”

  I again squeeze my son’s shoulder. “Give to him answer, joon-am.”

  “Yeah, I was going to leave.”

  The refrain of the video game continues, repeating itself every five seconds; it is the music of the microchip, as automatic and insincere as lies.

  “Did you leave?”

  “No.”

  Esmail has answered too quickly. Lester V. Burdon’s eyes become smaller, and he draws in his lower lip. He regards first me, then Nadi, the computer game repeating itself again and yet again.

  “This isn’t working out,” says Lester V. Burdon. “It just isn’t.” He orders us into the bathroom that still smells of Kathy Nicolo’s vomit. The carpet is moist from her bath. The tub is full of her water. As my family stands close together between the sink and toilet and bath, Burdon looks behind and above us at the small window set high into the tile wall, his eyes passing quickly over Esmail and Nadi, then at the panjare once more before he nods his head to himself and touches the door’s handle. “I don’t want to see this move. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” I to him say. “We understand.”

  Then Burdon stands more straight, as if has just slipped a heavy pack from his shoulders. He regards us once more, then he pulls shut the door behind him.

&nb
sp; LESTER LOOKED AT THE DOOR A MOMENT LONGER, THEN TOOK THE chance and hurried to the front of the house. He stuck the pistol back into the rear waistband of his pants, switched off the exterior light, and stepped outside onto the front stoop. The nearest home was on the other side of the cars in the driveway, its screened porch light on, one in the family room too. Lester could see the corner of a TV set, the color flicker of its screen, then a man’s wrist as he lowered a cigarette or cigar into an ashtray on the table beneath the window. No one stood on the porch, no one stood at any of the other windows looking in this direction. He glanced to his right, but the small stucco house there looked equally quiet and undisturbed, just a few lights on downstairs, no one peering through darkened or lit windows waiting for an emergency phone call to bear fruit.

  He went back inside to Kathy’s room. Her color wasn’t any better; her cheeks still had a yellowish cast to them, but her pulse was steady and strong, and when he put his hand to her forehead it felt cool and dry and she raised her chin slightly and kept sleeping. He stood and slid open the closet door. He was looking for one of the colonel’s neckties, but in this closet were only women’s clothes, elegant-looking wool gowns covered in long sheets of dry-cleaning plastic, silk blouses and wool jackets; on the shelf above were oval hat boxes with French words embossed on their sides; and on the floor were twenty or thirty pairs of ladies’ shoes, most of them stuffed with tissue paper. He could still hear the colonel’s wife saying they have nothing, nothing, and it angered him further because he knew they had had at least enough to buy this place with cash at a county auction. From shelf hooks hung dress belts—silver, gold, black patent leather, one a brown alligator skin. Lester took that one, wrapped it around both fists, and pulled, but there was too much give in it and he put it back, glanced at Kathy again, her hair fanned out on the pillow, her lips parted slightly, and he went back into the hall and picked up the long iron pry bar.